Hey everyone! Long time no see! I've been up to my eyeballs in other projects, but am hoping to make more time for posting here. I figured I'd start with the long-overdue final post in my review of the
Marauders, Mugwumps, and Muggles collection from Shiro Cosmetics. Let's check out the face products and glosses!
Thanks so much to Kristin for her beautiful photos and swatches of the two face products!
Face Products
Milk Chocolate Frog
From the website: Warm milk-chocolatey bronzer with very minimal shimmer and a smooth glow-y finish. For full size products, the underside of the lid will have a random witch or wizard “card” on the back! Collect ’em all, trade with your friends 😀
Ingredients: mica, titanium dioxide, iron oxide, tin oxide. Lip- and Eye-safe!
Personal Comments: True to the site description, I find the Milk Chocolate Frog bronzer has very minimal shimmer and a smooth finish. If the color suits you, I think this is Shiro's best offering for an "everyday" bronzer, as its finish is much more subtle and closer to matte than the original Coconut Mall and Shine Sprite bronzers in Shiro's line. I use bronzer to warm up the perimeter and high points of my face, and I find this a little darker than I personally prefer on my ~NC15 skin tone but it blends down just fine. I found it's important to make sure your base is set before applying this bronzer - good practice for all powder products, of course, but some are more forgiving than others. All that said, I have no complaints about the product's performance. I haven't had a chance to do a proper longevity test on this, but in general I find Shiro's face products have no problem lasting through the workday on my dry skin.
White Chocolate Frog
From the website: Mid-toned milky ivory with minimal shimmer and a smooth glow-y finish. For full size products, the underside of the lid will have a random witch or wizard “card” on the back! Collect ’em all, trade with your friends 😀
Ingredients: mica, titanium dioxide, iron oxide, tin oxide. Lip- and Eye-safe!
Personal Comments: White Chocolate Frog has become my go-to highlighter! I'm so pleased with this product. On the Shiro highlighter intensity spectrum, I'd say this is a little more detectable on the skin than the Boy Band highlighters, a little less intense than The Flashiest of Flashes, and much less intense than Curaga. In other words, it's my Goldilocks highlighter. I reach for this regularly when I'm doing no-makeup makeup looks because it's subtle but buildable, which makes it easy to apply when I'm doing my makeup half awake before work. I've heard a ton of raves about this product so I think it's working really well for a lot of people. I do want to mention I spoke with one person (who has roughly the same skin depth as me but with neutral/warm to olive undertones) and she wasn't a fan - I believe she said it looked ashy on her skin. As always, I'd recommend picking up a sample if you're at all uncertain about a product!
Lip Glosses
Every Flavour Lip Gloss
From the website: We wanted to have a take on Every Flavour Beans that could be kept around as a viable, permanent thing, so this version is inspired by the purple-and-gold candy containers instead of the beans themselves! Dots of warm metallic gold “stars,” backed by a deep blurple. Flavored like whatever we feel like on a batch-by-batch basis! (We promise it will never be earwax, or gross stuff in general. If you have allergy concerns please contact me in advance!)
Full size product comes as shown, sample clamshells will receive mostly the blurple part with a dot or two of gold on the side.
Ingredients (Blurple): hydrogenated polyisobutene, ethylene/propylene/styrene copolymer, butylene/ethylene/styrene copolymer, meadowfoam seed oil, cocoa butter, blue #1, red #27, kaolin clay, zinc oxide, castor oil, vitamin E, flavor.
Ingredients (Gold): hydrogenated polyisobutene, ethylene/propylene/styrene copolymer, butylene/ethylene/styrene copolymer, meadowfoam seed oil, cocoa butter, mica, titanium dioxide, iron oxide, bronze powder, silica, vitamin E, flavor.
Personal Comments: I'm sorry to report this product and I didn't get along, so my review is a little lengthy.
This is a beautiful color that's sometimes purple and sometimes blurple depending on how much you build it up (the more product, the more blue it appears to me). It's nicely pigmented and fairly easy to build to full opacity. Folks who have used darker glosses won't be shocked to hear the color is tough to get 100% even - when I'm looking up close in the mirror I can see my lip lines are a deeper color than the rest of my lips. It also feathers a bit (immediately on my top lip and after 1.5 or 2 hours on my bottom lip), though it should be noted I'm prone to feathering. For swatches and testing I mixed up the blue and gold in my sample clamshell. I've worn this color a few times now and I can't say I've seen any gold or shimmer present on my lips - I think the gold dots are in small enough quantity that they don't affect the normal finish of the gloss.
Longevity test: After about 1.5 hours and drinking out of a water glass I noticed there was less color in the center of my bottom lip. A little over two hours in my lips started to feel a little dry; I believe my batch's flavor is some kind of mint, and minty lip products tend to dry my lips out. Overall this lasted nearly 6 hours on me, but to be honest, it looked pretty beat up for a good chunk of that - it had worn away to a bright pink in the middle while remaining purple around the edges and looked super patchy. Here's a photo taken a little over 4 hours after application:
Just so no one thinks I'm just judging the product too harshly, I want to point out that I recently wore a different opaque Shiro gloss out to drinks and it still looked beautiful after about six hours. You can see before and after photos
here on my Instagram. So I had high hopes for this one!
I absolutely love the color and pigmentation on this gloss, but between the uneven application and tough performance, I can't recommend it unless you're comfortable with a lot of gloss upkeep. A clear anti-feathering pencil will address some of my issues and a lip primer/lip liner might help with the application and wear, but that still makes this a high maintenance color in my book. If nothing else I strongly recommend picking up a sample before springing for a full tube.
Purchase Link
Butterbeer (aka Shiro & Co. Hand Blended Butterbeer)
From the website: Our take on a frothy mug of caramelly butterbeer! A bit of sparkly “foam” head to start off, topped up with a sheer warm-caramel colored gloss (you can even see the bubbles, it’s seriously cute). Scented with our own house-blended butterbeer flavoring!
Full size product comes as shown, sample clamshells will receive mostly the brown butterbeer part with a dot of the foam part included.
Ingredients (Butterbeer): hydrogenated polyisobutene, ethylene/propylene/styrene copolymer, butylene/ethylene/styrene copolymer, meadowfoam seed oil, cocoa butter, red #40, orange #5, iron oxide, castor oil, vitamin E, flavor.
Ingredients (Foam): hydrogenated polyisobutene, ethylene/propylene/styrene copolymer, butylene/ethylene/styrene copolymer, meadowfoam seed oil, cocoa butter, red #40, orange #5, mica, titanium dioxide, iron oxide, calcium aluminum borosiliate, silica, castor oil, vitamin E, flavor.
Personal comments: First things first, I have to say, the full size packaging on this one is totally charming. But it's what's inside that counts, right? I got a clamshell and swirled the "Butterbeer" and "Foam" colors together before applying. Given the "Foam" color is mostly at the very end of the full sized packaging, you might see less shimmer if you're applying this from the full size tube.
The scent reminds me of caramel popcorn, and smells a lot like some Haus of Gloi fall seasonal scents I've tried (probably out of the Candy Bowl set!). On my lips this is indeed sheer as advertised. It doesn't make me look like I'm wearing any lip color, but I do notice this tones down my natural lip color a bit. I find it to be thick, plush, and immensely comfortable to wear. There looks like a lot of fine shimmer in the container, but I only see this on my lips when I'm right up close to the mirror. From normal viewing distance this mostly adds a high shine, no apparent shimmer; the shimmer you see in the swatch photo is because I took this in bright natural lighting. This would be a good everyday, low maintenance gloss!
When I checked the mirror around an hour into wear, I noticed it felt slightly less thick and the finish had less shine. An hour and a half in it dried down enough to feel more like a thick balm than a gloss. I ate a meal at the 1.5 hour mark and it did take down a lot of what was left of the gloss. By the two hour mark, I saw the fine sparkle on my lips when I looked closely in the mirror but otherwise there wasn't much left. By 2.5 hours it looked and felt completely gone. I generally get 2-3 hours out of Shiro's sheer glosses, so this is right about average.
Purchase Link
Felix Felicis
From the website: Swirling, shifting golds for good luck! We’ve filled these tubes with two different takes on gold: a sheer smattering of pure gold sparkle and a deep, more pigmented molten gold core. Get out there and shine! Full sizes are packaged in a doefoot tube with a handwritten potion-y label.
Flavor: Light, sweet caramel-vanilla.
Ingredients: hydrogenated polyisobutene, ethylene/propylene/styrene copolymer, butylene/ethylene/styrene copolymer, meadowfoam seed oil, cocoa butter, mica, titanium dioxide, iron oxide, tin oxide, bronze powder, calcium aluminum borosilicate, silica, vitamin E, flavor.
Personal Comments: This stinkin' gloss is so hard to photograph! I tried multiple forms of natural and artificial lighting, but every photo I took makes it look patchy on my lips. So, you'll just have to trust me when I say this gloss is fully opaque and perfectly even in real life. I've only tried a couple other gold lip products before (Fyrinnae Isis and Little Sparrow Gold Medal) but this blows both of them out of the water. It's comfortable to wear and of much better opacity and evenness than both of them. The scent is more or less vanilla, or something close to it.
I may be stating the obvious, but this is definitely a statement lip. Even though I have warm-toned skin, this doesn't mesh perfectly with my skin tone, and I think it's because the gold leans a little dirty/antique? That said, the color softens about an hour or two into wear (likely as it slowly fades and loses pigmentation) and I think I like it a little better at this point.
Longevity test: 1.5 hours in it still looked fabulous, opaque, and even, though the finish changed a bit from a high gloss shine to more of a metallic sheen. As with pretty much all Shiro glosses it slowly lost its "plumpness" and hugged my lips a little closer as I wore it. 3 hours in, it still looked neat and even but a lot of the color had worn down so it looked more traditionally "wearable". I could see some buildup of pigment in my lip lines, but only when I smiled. By that point it was hugging pretty close to my lips and feeling fairly thin. 4 hours in it still looked wearable, but it was feeling and looking dry enough that I was ready to either reapply it or take it off.
Purchase Link
Amortentia
From the website: Love potion gloss! Enthralling pinky-magenta with a dash of rosy sparkle, sure to steal hearts wherever you go. Opacity leans on the more opaque side of moderate. Full sizes are packaged in a doefoot tube with a handwritten potion-y label.
Flavor: Pomegranate and a hint of alluring rose.
Ingredients: hydrogenated polyisobutene, ethylene/propylene/styrene copolymer, butylene/ethylene/styrene copolymer, meadowfoam seed oil, cocoa butter, kaolin clay, red #27, red #33, synthetic fluorophylogopite, silica, titanium dioxide, tin oxide, vitamin E, flavor.
Personal Comments: This gloss has tons of dimension - it's lovely! The pink sparks aren't really visible unless you're very close to the mirror, though I did spot a couple at the edges of my lips. I noticed slight feathering after application but it didn't progress.
Longevity test: 2 hours in it was about half as plush feeling as it was on application and hugged the lips more closely. It was still nicely opaque but a bit lighter in color. The pink sparks stood out just a bit more. At 3 hours I ate a bowl of noodles in broth and you know what? It still looked awesome. The glossy finish was almost completely gone but the color was still super vibrant and even. I noted slightly less pigmentation on the inner parts of my lips where I was slurping noodles, but it still looked great. By just shy of 4 hours I was seeing a lot more wear on my inner lips and I was ready to take it off and reapply. Overall, this is a great gloss, and definitely one of my favorites from the collection.
Purchase Link
Polyjuice
From the website: So it won’t transform you into someone else without the final ingredient (and we do not in fact advocate adding someone’s hair to this), but it’s a start! An ultra-sheer pop of true green, great for layering over lipstick or for tinting naturally red lips toward brown. Full sizes are packaged in a doefoot tube with a handwritten potion-y label.
Flavor: Spicy and herbal, unexpectedly very pleasant! Honeyed pumpkin and a dash of pine trees.
Ingredients: hydrogenated polyisobutene, ethylene/propylene/styrene copolymer, butylene/ethylene/styrene copolymer, meadowfoam seed oil, cocoa butter, blue #1, yellow #5, castor oil, vitamin E, flavor.
Personal Comments: As with Butterbeer, I found Polyjuice slightly muted my natural lip color rather than making my lips look green (if this is disappointing to you, scroll down!). It gives my lips a high gloss finish. Also as with Butterbeer and Shiro's other sheer glosses, I don't get more than 1.5-2 hours of wear out of this before wanting to reapply. I think this is going to be most appealing to the kind of folks who love
Frog Prince by Lipstick Queen - it can be super fun to pull out a crazy green tube of gloss but have it apply as a more "wearable" color. The Shiro team also offer a couple of suggestions for wear in the site description, and I'll be curious to try this over various lipstick colors (this would probably improve the longevity as well).
All that said, I don't find myself reaching for this because the flavor isn't to my personal taste, and it's strong enough to be offputting as a result. I'm not a big fan of herbal scents in general, though, so as always your mileage may vary. This is for sure one I'd suggest getting in a sample clamshell before committing to a full size if you've at all worried about the flavor.
While we're talking about Polyjuice, I want to show you a custom opaque Polyjuice gloss I picked up for a friend, who kindly let me do a (sanitary, promise!) swatch:
This was gorgeous - beautifully even, opaque, and very comfortable on. I didn't wear it for long so I can't comment on longevity, but generally I can get many hours of wear out of my opaque Shiro glosses. There's no official listing for this, but I purchased it by messaging brand owner Caitlin and requesting an opaque Polyjuice gloss via their
custom lip gloss option.
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I hope this was helpful! Have a great week everyone!
This is one of those posts I warned you would be coming. I have made far more purchases from Haus of Gloi than products I have reviewed. I tend to get out of hand when I order things. Rose City has been a standout for me. I started with just a sample, fell desperately in love, and had to buy more. I’ve held myself to just a body emulsion and a full size perfume bottle due to an awful incident involving car sickness and a different rose perfume. But it has not tarnished my love for this particular rose scent. Let me tell you why it’s perfect.
This is one of those posts I warned you would be coming. I have made far more purchases from Haus of Gloi than products I have reviewed. I tend to get out of hand when I order things. Rose City has been a standout for me. I started with just a sample, fell desperately in love, and had to buy more. I’ve held myself to just a body emulsion and a full size perfume bottle due to an awful incident involving car sickness and a different rose perfume. But it has not tarnished my love for this particular rose scent. Let me tell you why it’s perfect.
